Arthur Demarest | |
---|---|
Born | Louisiana |
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Anthropologist and archaeologist |
Known for | Studies of the Maya civilization |
Arthur Andrew Demarest is an American anthropologist and archaeologist, known for his studies of the Maya civilization.
Demarest, a Louisiana Cajun, [1] studied Mesoamerican anthropology and archaeology at Tulane University, where he graduated summa cum laude and was awarded the Dean's Medal. Demarest earned his M.A. and doctorate in anthropology and archaeology at Harvard University, he held the endowed Danforth Chair in Archeology, and was elected to the prestigious Harvard Society of Fellows. From 1984 to 1986 he served as assistant professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, US. In 1986 he was promoted to Full Professor and was named to the endowed Centennial Chair. He now holds the endowed chair of Ingram Professor of Anthropology and is the director of Mesoamerican archaeology and development.
Demarest has worked in Mesoamerica for over 35 years, leading archaeological excavations and investigative expeditions every year. He is considered one of the world's leading experts on the Maya, but is also interested in the Olmec, Incas, Aztecs and many aspects of anthropological theory, particularly the collapse of civilizations, the role of religion in ancient societies, and ethics in anthropology. He currently divides his efforts between archaeological excavations and exploration, development programs for indigenous Maya communities, and management of the Vanderbilt-owned, but Maya-managed, Cancuen tropical forest and archaeological park in the Peten region of Guatemala. He is currently director of both the Vanderbilt Cancuen Regional Archaeological project in the Peten forest of Guatemala and the Vanderbilt/Universidad del Valle San Andres Semetabej Regional Archaeology and Development projects in Guatemala's volcanic highlands.
Demarest has been involved in several lawsuits filed by graduate student Brigitte Kovacevich regarding his actions while conducting scientific research in Guatemala. The first of these lawsuits was filed in 2007, and alleged that Demarest "engaged in repeated unprofessional and outrageous conduct that included burning down the field camp, destruction of artifacts, fabrication of a crime scene, the misappropriation and misuse of Vanderbilt University and government funds, threats against students and assaults of students." That suit was settled in 2008. [2] [3] Demarest was again sued in the following year for violating the terms of the previous settlement. Kovacevich alleged that Demarest contacted the University Press of Colorado and claimed that Kovacevich did not have permission from an artist to use certain illustrations in her book, and Demarest also attempted to coerce the artist into withdrawing his consent. That suit was also settled. [2]
In 2010 Science published a profile of Demarest and his work. Demarest's work with the Maya in Mesoamerica has been featured in many TV documentaries by National Geographic, the History Channel, Travel Channel, NBC, CBS, and programs in Brazil and Guatemala. As an authority in the field, Demarest has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, other venues and most recently the PBS Lehrer News hour regarding his research development work, the ancient Maya civilization and the collapse of civilizations.
Demarest himself is the author or editor of over a dozen books and monographs and over a hundred articles and book chapters.
Demarest has been awarded various prizes for his archaeological and educational work in Guatemala and for his development work assisting contemporary Q'eqchi' contemporary Maya people communities.
In 2000 Demarest was presented with the Orden del Pop, a career leadership award bestowed by Guatemala's Universidad Francisco Marroquín in recognition of his services to Guatemalan archaeology, particularly his training of most of the current Guatemalan leaders in the archaeology of their country.
In 2004 Demarest became the first U.S. citizen to be awarded the Orden Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural de Guatemala. Demarest was presented with that award by the President of Guatemala, Óscar Berger, in a ceremony on November 10 of that year with a citation for his successful battles with looters and his contributions to "the rescue, conservation, and protection of the tangible cultural patrimony of Guatemala." [4]
Demarest was named Distinguished Alumni for 2003 by Tulane University. He has won the Madison-Sarratt Award from Vanderbilt University for outstanding undergraduate teaching in the Arts and Sciences College.
Demarest, his wife, Vilma Lorena Anleu de Demarest and three sons are currently residents in Guatemala and the U.S., and also frequently in Finland, where they collaborate with European museum exhibitions and international indigenous development efforts.
Mayan or Maya mythology is part in of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all of the Maya tales in which personified forces of nature, deities, and the heroes interacting with these play the main roles. The legends of the era have to be reconstructed from iconography. Other parts of Mayan oral tradition are not considered here.
Qʼuqʼumatz was a god of wind and rain of the Postclassic Kʼicheʼ Maya. It was the Feathered Serpent that according to the Popol Vuh created the world and humanity, together with the god Tepeu. It carried the sun across the sky and down into the underworld and acted as a mediator between the various powers in the Maya cosmos. It is considered to be the equivalent of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and of Kukulkan, of the Yucatec Maya.
Kʼicheʼ are Indigenous peoples of the Americas and are one of the Maya peoples. The eponymous Kʼicheʼ language is a Mesoamerican language in the Mayan language family. The highland Kʼicheʼ states in the pre-Columbian era are associated with the ancient Maya civilization, and reached the peak of their power and influence during the Mayan Postclassic period.
The Maya are an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. The ancient Maya civilization was formed by members of this group, and today's Maya are generally descended from people who lived within that historical region. Today they inhabit southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and westernmost El Salvador and Honduras.
Michael Douglas Coe was an American archaeologist, anthropologist, epigrapher, and author. He is known for his research on pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, particularly the Maya, and was among the foremost Mayanists of the late twentieth century. He specialised in comparative studies of ancient tropical forest civilizations, such as those of Central America and Southeast Asia. He held the chair of Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, Yale University, and was curator emeritus of the Anthropology collection in the Peabody Museum of Natural History, where he had been curator from 1968 to 1994.
Cancuén is an archaeological site of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, located in the Pasión subregion of the central Maya lowlands in the present-day Guatemalan Department of Petén. The city is notable for having one of the largest palaces in the Maya world.
The Petén Basin is a geographical subregion of the Maya Lowlands, primarily located in northern Guatemala within the Department of El Petén, and into the state of Campeche in southeastern Mexico.
Petexbatún is a small lake formed by a river of the same name, which is a tributary of the La Pasion river. It is near Sayaxché, located in the southern area of the Guatemalan department of Petén.
Merle Greene Robertson was an American artist, art historian, archaeologist, lecturer and Mayanist researcher, renowned for her extensive work towards the investigation and preservation of the art, iconography, and writing of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Central America. She is most famous for her rubbings of Maya carved stelae, sculpture, and carved stone, particularly at the Maya sites of Tikal and Palenque.
Richard D. Hansen is an American archaeologist who is an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.
The Museo Popol Vuh is home to one of the major collections of Maya art in the world. It is located on the campus of the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Zone 10, Guatemala City. The museum is known for its extensive collection of pre-Columbian and colonial art of the Maya culture.
Kan Maax, alternatively transliterated as K'an Maax, has been identified as the last known ruler of Cancuén, a pre-Columbian Maya polity located at the headwaters of the Pasion River in modern-day Guatemala.
Tajal Chan Ahk was an 8th-century ruler of the Maya city Cancuén, whose rule lasted from 757 to c. 799.
The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. The civilization is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system.
Galina Gavrilovna Yershova, or Ershova is a Russian academic historian, linguist, and epigrapher, who specialises in the study of the ancient civilisations, cultures, and languages of the New World. As an Americanist scholar, her area of expertise is in the field of Mesoamerican studies, and in particular that of the pre-Columbian Maya civilisation, its historical literature, and its writing system. Yershova is a former student and protégé of the Russian linguist and epigrapher Yuri Knorozov, renowned for his central contributions towards the decipherment of the Maya script.
Ian James Alastair Graham OBE was a British Mayanist whose explorations of Maya ruins in the jungles of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize helped establish the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions published by the Peabody Museum of Harvard University. Among his related works is a biography of an early predecessor, the 19th-century British Maya explorer Alfred Maudslay.
The Orden del Pop is an annual award bestowed by the Museo Popol Vuh at Guatemala's Universidad Francisco Marroquín. Created in 1998, the Orden del Pop recognises "the work of individuals who have made significant contributions towards the protection, study and research of Guatemala's cultural heritage".
Juan Pedro Laporte Molina was a prominent Guatemalan archaeologist best known for his work on the ancient Maya civilization. He studied in the United States at the University of Arizona, in which he enrolled at the age of nineteen. After just one year he transferred to the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico. He continued his studies at the Universidad Autónoma de México from 1972 to 1976, from which he graduated with a doctorate in archaeology. He worked as a research assistant at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City from 1967 through to 1976. Laporte worked at various archaeological sites while he was in Mexico, including Tlatilco, Chichen Itza and Dainzú. He first began working as an archaeologist in Guatemala in the 1970s, and was the head of the School of History of the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (USAC) for more than thirty years. He first entered USAC in 1977, soon after returning from Mexico. In 1974 he carried out investigations at the Maya archaeological site of Uaxactun in the northern Petén Department of Guatemala. Between 1974 and 1976 he carried out archaeological investigations in Antigua Guatemala, which has since been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and around Lake Izabal.
The history of Maya civilization is divided into three principal periods: the Preclassic, Classic and Postclassic periods; these were preceded by the Archaic Period, which saw the first settled villages and early developments in agriculture. Modern scholars regard these periods as arbitrary divisions of chronology of the Maya civilization, rather than indicative of cultural evolution or decadence. Definitions of the start and end dates of period spans can vary by as much as a century, depending on the author. The Preclassic lasted from approximately 3000 BC to approximately 250 AD; this was followed by the Classic, from 250 AD to roughly 950 AD, then by the Postclassic, from 950 AD to the middle of the 16th century. Each period is further subdivided: